Validation of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, Second Edition (RCMAS-2) Scores for Children with Specific Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Specific learning disabilities are one of the most common and debilitating disorders experienced by children and adolescents, and students with specific learning disabilities may be particularly vulnerable to anxiety. The Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, Second Edition (RCMAS-2) is a newly revised measure of chronic, manifest anxiety among children and adolescents. Although reliability and validity of the RCMAS-2 scores have been reported among a general sample of children and adolescents, use of the RCMAS-2 has not yet been empirically-examined among children and adolescents with specific learning disabilities. This study investigates the psychometric properties, including reliability and validity, of the RCMAS-2 scores among children and adolescents with specific learning disabilities, and considers whether the RCMAS-2 is an appropriate instrument for measuring anxiety among students with specific learning disabilities. Results indicated that the RCMAS-2 demonstrates a different factor structure among students with specific learning disabilities compared to a general sample of children and adolescents, which does not support the factorial invariance of the RCMAS-2 scores across students with and without specific learning disabilities. With regard to the RCMAS-2 three-factor structure, some evidence of convergent and discriminant validity was found between the scores of the RCMAS-2 scales and subscales and scores of conceptually-similar and dissimilar scales, respectively, although other analyses did not yield the expected results. Reliability estimates indicated adequate internal consistency reliability and temporal stability for the RCMAS-2 scores among students with specific learning disabilities. Overall, the validity of the RCMAS-2 scores among students with specific learning disabilities could not be adequately established, and more research is necessary to determine whether the RCMAS-2 is an appropriate measure of anxiety for students with specific learning disabilities.